Action: Call or Email your Councillor today and let them know you think Mayor Ford's Transit Plan is bad for the suburbs and taxpayers. And also let them know you want Torontonians to have a chance to speak about the plan at community consultations before Mayor Ford's plan goes to City Council for a vote.
Finch West is forgotten. The people who use the busiest bus route in the city get nothing, except the promise of express buses. The money that could have built the Finch West LRT is used to needlessly bury the remaining 8 km of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT.
Scarborough is snubbed. The planned subway, if it ever gets built, does nothing for people who live east of Scarborough City Centre. The Scarborough RT is simply updated with a LRT. That means 75% of people who live in Scarborough get nothing.
People near Sheppard Ave lose whether a subway gets built or not. There is huge skepticism that the $4.2 billion needed to build the subway will come from the private sector. If it happens, condo developers will tear down homes and small businesses all along Sheppard and replace them with walls of 40 storey skyscrapers. If the private sector says no, people along Sheppard get nothing and will have lost an LRT that was already being built.
Taxpayers lose. The Mayor’s Transit Plan will build 25 km of Light Rail Transit (LRT) with the Province’s $8.2 billion instead of the original 52 km that was announced last year. We get half for the same amount of money. And that means roughly 250,000 fewer Torontonians will have access to fast reliable transit, compared to the Transit City Plan.
About the only good thing that can be said about the Plan is that it agrees to build the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, a core part of the Transit City Plan.
The suburbs lose and the taxpayers lose. Yet, Mayor Ford thinks his plan is good for us. If he is so sure this is the case, he must make sure the public in every part of the city has the right to comment, through public meetings, before the plan goes to a vote at City Council.